


the secret.

by baali



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Aftermath of Creativity Split, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Blood and Injury, Creativity Split (Sanders Sides), Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Origin Story, Pain, Pre-Series, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:49:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22555861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baali/pseuds/baali
Summary: Deceit-centric in honour of the serpent's birthday.
Comments: 13
Kudos: 28





	the secret.

**Author's Note:**

> Creativity died.
> 
> The serpent isn't sure what he's meant to be.
> 
> \--
> 
> Beta'd by alcreamie, ethospathos on Tumblr. Thank you!

**the secret.**

The first moments of new life were utter _agony_ for a newly developed Side. They were meant to be incorporeal until the mind of their core identified a need to present them a body, in which case the mind would supply it and the Side would inhabit it. To be created with the mind, unwilling, was a fight against nature itself.

The Side in question being 'birthed' was a serpent. The body the mind put together for it was half-formed, barely human, little more than an animal on two legs. Sleek scales carved out of a shadow covered its skin, gold light filling its eyes, with a forked red tongue lolling out of its obscenely large mouth. Its sharp teeth dripped _venom_ \-- the mind had seen fit to provide its unwanted resident with a form to reflect its spite.

It wasn't too big of a surprise that the first thing the new Side felt after the agony of being created was the raw pain of being broken by one of the original Sides. Had he stepped on it? Broke a chair over its back? _Rejected it_?

 _Ouch_.

The serpent lost its tenuous grasp on its form for a few long moments so it could simply recover from the pain and shock. When it began to corporealize once more, it painstakingly underwent a few changes to appear more palatable to the Side that had just hurt it.

He looked like a boy that had never seen sunlight, a boy bred in the shadows and raised on a diet of lizard blood, for despite every bit of energy the serpent put into its new form it couldn't wholly abandon what had just happened to it. A large purple and black bruise marred his features, smudged on the left side of his face all the way down his neck and into his shirt. His eyes were mismatched; the right one was a warm brown like the eyes of everyone else, but the left was no less gold than the eyes of the serpent's first form. He had long fingers, an uncertain demeanour, a furtive look to his mismatched eyes. He lacked the scales and slitted pupils of his first form but retained the serpent's tongue and fanged teeth hidden behind his lips.

When he identified the two Sides who had come to greet him, he recognized one on a deep instinctual level.

_Important. Protect. Come home._

Even despite the flush of warmth and yearning for comfort, the serpent also recognized this same Side to have been the one to discorporate his first form.

_Danger. Do not trust. Stay away._

Conflict.

His brow furrowed.

"Why am I here?" Asked the serpent in an effort to immediately solve the matter of his confusion. He looked around to identify his location and recognized it as _home_ , a concept that radiated warmth differently than it did with the first individual he recognized. _Thomas lives here_ , his mind supplied. The serpent knew Thomas. The name inspired a flood of emotion to fill his entire being, a dose of love and need and possession that stole his breath for a moment. His mismatched gaze returned to the two boys. 

"We don't know," said one boy. A pretty smattering of freckles decorated his cheekbones under his square rimmed glasses. He, like the serpent, had a wavy mop of dark brown hair, but unlike the serpent half of his face wasn't messed up. Both of his eyes were an even darker shade of brown. "You just appeared here."

"Do you remember anything?" The _warm_ boy asked. His eyes were glistening with emotion behind an identical pair of glasses to the first. Without consciously thinking the serpent extended a forked tongue to identify the swell of _feeling_ just pouring out of the poor kid. He didn't miss the way the boy flinched back. The reaction explained why he had hurt the serpent, he supposed, and why the serpent felt such conflicting feelings regarding him.

"I remember pain," the serpent answered once he had gotten the read he wanted. The boy flinched again and it seemed he may cry. "Please don't be sad. I promise that it's okay. Mistakes happen."

 _Like me_ , a surprisingly bitter and foreign part of his mind whispered, a part of him that sounded remarkably convincing. He wasn't sure where that thought had come from. Another thought repeated itself, shooting through his mind like a bolt of excruciating lightning and demanding to be answered, **needing** to be answered.

" _Why am I here_?" The serpent growled out the words in response to the pain. Both boys flinched this time and Freckles stepped back warily while _my Heart_ shifted to stand between serpent and child. "I'm here for a reason. _Why_?"

Within him, through him, around him, the Mindscape's presence reverberated with the weight of the question. He knew that it wanted to know, too. _Why make a serpent? Thomas didn't need him._ A particularly sharp jab of agony shattered against the inside of his chest when _that_ particular thought permeated the questions floating in the haze of his mind.

Freckles placed a hand on Heart's shoulder to coax him aside, striding forward with a newfound courage. The serpent's hackles rose instinctively and a feeling built in his gut, a newfound certainty permeating his very bones. _Defend us_ , said his heart. His body responded by curling his lips to expose gleaming fangs very nearly dripping with gathered venom.

Freckles stopped. Heart placed a hand on his chest, seeming newly frightened and wavering in his own courage. Did he want to run? The serpent thought so. He lowered his guard slightly in response and despite every screaming impulse demand he do anything else he forced himself to _relax_.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. The words tasted insincere on his tongue, a flavour he would compare to the rich taste of sweet chocolate. Delicious.

"It's okay," Freckles said as he took up the mantle of being the cautious one again. "I think you might be here to help us. Do you feel like you're meant to help?"

The serpent blinked at him. Was he meant to help? With what? "I think I'm supposed to protect us," he said slowly once he had thought about it for a moment. The words tasted weird, fitting in his mouth strangely and leaving him feeling like the definition of 'protector' didn't quite encompass his purpose. Close but no dice.

 _Do I have a purpose?_ He addressed the void that created him this time, speaking directly to the Mindscape and whatever higher power it was that deemed him fit enough to have a body. The answer was there, he thought, just out of reach of his grasping fingers. When it didn't come willingly he looked to Heart over Freckles' shoulder in search of some kind of sympathy, needing to see acceptance but not understanding _why_ he required it from this other Side.

Freckles did not mention the lapse in conversation and seemed to instead have sunk into considering the matter internally.

Heart himself seemed to be thinking about his own things, working over his own issues, and glanced over his shoulder just once.

And that was when the serpent realized they were not alone.

Behind the two boys and against the wall on the other side of the childishly decorated room were two seemingly sleeping children wrapped tightly around one another in a hug. Both wore white. Neither seemed well. When the serpent settled his gaze on them something struck a chord in his chest and a note of sympathy reverberated through his ribcage.

Pain rose up in pursuit of the feeling but the serpent refused to flinch and instead started forward, measuring his gait evenly to not further frighten his two new companions. He was suddenly certain that he had found his purpose, discovered what he was meant to protect, and he needed to touch them to be sure.

"Wait, wait!" Heart realized where he was going and jumped in his way, hand outstretched to grasp the serpent by the arm. His fingers were discoloured, the serpent noticed, covered in what looked like black paint that had long since dried. When Heart took his wrist though, the curious thoughts emptied out of his head and were replaced instead with some deep emotional turmoil that shook through his very core.

The serpent reacted immediately. He pulled his arm away with a frightening howl of despair, hackles rising, fangs on display, eyes flashing a dangerous gold and face darkening with a confusing combination of betrayal and fury.

"No," he spat, backing away from Heart and hissing at both him and Freckles when they raised their hands and made a slow approach. "No, no, _no_ , stop. Ssssssstop." He bit the word out until they did just that. His arm ached where he had been touched, haunted by the phantom pain of scabbing wounds being ripped open and exposed to cruel hands. _Why_ did it feel like that? It had hurt so bad. 

Heart himself seemed pretty torn up about whatever it had been, however he lacked the emotional weight that the serpent expected him to feel if he had experienced the same pain. Hadn't he? Freckles himself seemed at a loss. 

The beginning of a habit formed in that moment when the serpent raised his bruised left hand and began rubbing furiously over the point of contact on his right wrist. It soothed the tension clinging to his skin. He could pretend away the hurt.

"Please don't touch me," the serpent whispered once the dull roar in his ears had diminished and the pounding of his heart had eased up. 

"I'm so sorry, kiddo," Heart said. He looked to be on the verge of crying again, and this time the serpent wondered if the child could simply do nothing but cry. He seemed to want to say more but his voice couldn't find the words.

"It's important we don't disturb those two until they're ready to wake," Freckles spoke up after a moment. It was clear to the serpent that _those two_ were the boys he desperately wanted to 'disturb', but he withheld the immediate desire to do just that. For Heart's sake. "Thank you."

The serpent forced himself to stop staring at the slumbering boys and refused to stare at the two in front of him. He chose instead to look around the room and get a bearing of its purpose.

In an important existential way, the serpent knew who _he_ was as a collective. The five of them from the serpent to Freckles to Heart to both sleeping boys were parts of a bigger whole. He knew that with more certainty than he knew how to breathe. The knowledge of Thomas suffused his very being and he, a newly formed and not even named Side, knew that the one universal constant in his existence was that Thomas also existed. With this knowledge he knew that his surroundings were not a real place, but merely a figmented reality. The Mindscape was a tight, densely packed habitat within the mind of a true human person. He knew the Mindscape saw fit to outfit this room for its inhabitants. There were personalized little nooks off to one side with _names_ of all things, belonging to Emotion and Curiosity and Creativity. He knew the telescope wasn't real and nor were the fabricated stars in the sky outside. The gaudy curtains, elaborate costumes, stuffed animals, hand-painted murals, clothes, _them_. None of it was real.

"Who am I?" The serpent asked.

"We were wondering if you could tell us," Freckles answered.

The serpent considered them, their room, their landscape, their existence as a functioning part of young Thomas' developing mind. If he looked hard enough at one of them, say Heart, he could trace a fragile cyan string all the way back to Thomas' emotional needs and the pursuit of approval from his adult role models. When he considered Freckles, the serpent could find a navy wire tied tightly around the telescope and textbooks that originated somewhere from deep inside of Thomas and identified the location as the desire to merely _learn_.

When the serpent tried to find his own purpose what he found was the frayed end of a cyan string tied tightly to his wrist; the string was yellowing where it touched him, changing into something new, and he wasn't sure if he was ready to know why. The string led nowhere. It had been cut and he was floating adrift with no other purpose than to protect the children asleep on the floor.

"I'm not sure," he said. "I don't know."

When he looked at himself he could see the yellow string in his mind's eye. It was wrapped around the bruised skin of his left wrist, tangled in his fingers and knotted so tightly it cut into the skin. It didn't exist of course, but the image was deeply disconcerting and he forced himself to look away. He tried to think of something else and found a different thing to get confused over entirely.

"You're Emotion and you're Curiosity," the serpent said. His head whipped to face the two of them and he made to step forward. The sway of his whole body was comforting, like being rocked to sleep, however he could only imagine the gait to resemble the serpentine slither of a sidewinder rattlesnake. When both Heart and Freckles nodded, the serpent tapped his chin thoughtfully. "Which one of them is Creativity?"

Both Heart and Freckles flinched in extremely similar fashion, before flinching once again when the serpent cackled and clapped his hands together. The serpent did it with only the most subtle wince at the way his arm was jarred by the impact, playing it off with a wide grin.

"One of them is new too, aren't they? Which one? I think I'm meant to help him." That would have been an amazing outcome to the crisis of lacking direction in his purpose. So easy! So neat! So perfect! Point the serpent at the new kid and let them find their true names in the Mindscape together!

His emotional upswing crashed and burned when he focused again on Heart and Freckles and witnessed them exchanging disturbed looks. The serpent tilted his head and tried to get a read on their expressions, choosing to taste the air when he found himself without answers. The room tasted like fear, blood, and something strangely musky. It tasted like change, like the ozone feel after lightning strike, like a broken promise and the echo of his own agony. A potent bouquet; he should have done this much sooner. 

"What isssss it?" He asked. His eyes blazed gold, furious and resolute, one surrounded by bruises and the other unblemished. He had hissed again but without the intention to do so. His lips curled once more as a ripple of frustration zapped his extremities. "What'ssss wrong?"

He looked to his Heart for an answer.

Despite the conflicting feel of _danger!_ and _safety!_ that the serpent received upon meeting eyes with Emotion, he found himself trusting the warmth of that dark gaze, found himself sinking into the comforting blanket that radiated peace and understanding and deep regret.

"Something terrible happened," Heart said. 

Just a little in front and to the left of him Freckles scowled as he worked his jaw. Something dark in his gaze insinuated anger and grief that the serpent couldn't understand so he instead focused on the warmth of his Heart again.

"They are what happened to Creativity," said the boy. A piece of the puzzle fell into place for the serpent and his actual heart began to painfully palpitate as his metaphorical Heart continued to speak. Heart, though shakily and with _another_ wave of tears glistening in his eyes, described the way that Creativity had sunk deep into turmoil and saw no other escape than to make one for himself. Whatever Creativity had done, whether it be cutting himself in half with a sword or merely shattering like a glass dish, he was apparently unable to return. Heart thought that Creativity had wanted to kill himself.

When Curiosity spoke up he did it to rebuke Emotion and propose that Creativity simply tired of being pulled between the things he wanted to create and the things others wanted him to create. Curiosity said that Creativity saw himself at a crossroads and elected to take both paths rather than be limited to the one chosen for him.

The serpent thought his heart was breaking.

Perhaps he was meant to protect them both.

\--

In time the serpent's edged wariness eased up enough for him to begin inspecting the contents of their room. Nothing had changed over the past few minutes for him aside from an increased aching deep in his bones.However, he considered it merely the side effect of literally being crushed under foot.

He continued to move with a snake's unnerving grace, swaying with pendulous ease with every step taken. His new companions, Emotion and Curiosity, remained on edge. 

Curiosity seemed to think the serpent would rush at the sleeping boys the moment he had a chance; the serpent would have done exactly that so he didn't actually blame Freckles for it. He was pretending to read a book nearby and the serpent constantly resisted the undulating urge to ask what the book was. 

Emotion had retreated to his part of the room to begin picking up the accumulated mess on the floor. When the serpent looked at him and gave his tongue a quick flick he could taste the emotional turmoil in his Heart's body. Sympathy bubbled up inside of him. The serpent would have happily gone over to offer support but the instinctive tightening of his chest helpfully informed him that doing so would open his existence up to being challenged again. His body said it wouldn't recreate itself a second time. The serpent elected to merely keep to himself and be as innocuous as possible to avoid another accidental discorporation of his body.

Silently he picked through assorted knickknacks laid around the room, collecting them in his arms with the intention to put them away. It seemed appropriate that he would try to do something useful as they waited for the sleeping boys to wake. He would have rather done _anything_ else but clean-up duty had both Curiosity and Emotion not been watching him with discreet, furtive glances. When he tasted the air and he could find their own caution permeating the room he realized he would rather have nothing to do with encouraging their fears by acting in a way they did not like. So far his appearance unsettled them; the bruising across his visible skin, though fading gradually, appeared to unsettle Emotion and pique Curiosity's interest, but previous queries regarding the sensation of pain and touch had been shut down by disgruntled hissing through bared fangs, a response that had effectively killed all semblance of easy communication between the serpent and the Sides.

The serpent did his best to put away the things he'd collected without asking for help from either of the Sides present, identifying what went where by the way it felt in his hands. He refused to complain about his aches and pains to avoid exposing vulnerabilities to them and the part of the Mindscape still inhabiting his body. The instincts demanding he protect himself was kind enough to also identify the threat and point blame at the space they inhabited as the main culprit. He couldn't really make sense of it now but someday, sometime far in the future, he would realize that the Mindscape could have snuffed him out had it decided he was unnecessary after all and it was only his self-preservation that kept him from giving into its doubts.

"Hey, hey, um," the shy voice of his Heart broke through his mindless cleaning. He turned to face the other with a frown creasing his brow. Poor Emotion mirrored the expression, a response that had the serpent consciously smooth his expression. _Don't be seen_ , his tenuous connection to the Mindscape whispered through plucking the string. The advice was confusing and he chose to disregard it for the time being.

"How may I help you, Emotion?" The serpent asked as he placed down the rest of the toys he was putting away. Speaking his name was like tasting the sweetest tea, a flavour that was both alluring and repulsive, like candy and cough syrup. He was able to mask the instinctive flinch that would betray his feelings about the name underneath a polite smile. In truth, he definitely wanted to interact with these boys, his Heart in particular. He didn't want to chase them away and sever the connection he had to them. It was the only thing keeping him grounded with the thread that would have defined his purpose currently cut and webbed through his fingers. He didn't want to be left behind for the Mindscape to recycle back into itself. He wanted Curiosity and Emotion to help him stay.

"It's dinner time," Emotion said. "We wanted to offer you a place to eat with us. I-if you felt up to it, of c-course." His voice had started shaking near the end. The serpent's first emotional response was concern rearing its head in his chest. He couldn't tell if the concern was obligatory due to the emotional connection that needed him to care about Emotion or if it was genuine fear of what could be bothering him. Were those sympathies unrelated? He wasn't equipped to examine his own feelings and tried to shake it off if only to extend a hand of comfort out to the other young boy.

The screaming undercut the moment, rupturing the still air bred out of their silence and caution, and the serpent recoiled an extended hand automatically like just extending it to Emotion had burned him. His eyes flashed gold, his teeth glistened as he bared them, his hackles rose once more, and he whirled about to find the source of the commotion.

The sight of the twins wrapped around one another as they screamed in identical voices was enough to completely disarm him.

He rushed forward with Curiosity and Emotion, though with the upswing of optimism in his chest he was moving faster than them. Eager to see the twins and to meet the one he felt he was destined to help, the only thing that slowed him down on his approach was the hiss and cry of alarm from both Sides behind him and the smell of fresh blood from the Sides before him.

He came up short and his forked tongue slipped past his lips to wholly sample the taste of the blood in the air. Pupils blew wide, venom welled behind his fangs, and his breath caught in his throat as he took in the cause.

Both facets of Creativity were still wrapped around one another as they had been while asleep and from afar it truly looked like their embrace had only tightened with desperation and fear. Now that he could see it from up close he realized how truly wrong that was.

One boy's cloth was stained black with the same inky residue that had stained Emotion's fingers, the serpent realized, and it was gushing out of the ring of wounds fresh on the pale column of his throat. His hands were wrapped around the throat of his assailant and smeared with sweet blood. Underneath the overpowering current of blood the ink smelled like heavy tar freshly laid on the street.

The other boy was bleeding from a line of scratch marks deeply gouged into his arms. He had closed his jaws on his twin brother's throat and was sobbing as he gnawed, crying like he would have loved nothing more than to release his hold but couldn't find it in him to do so. He was retching around the oil filling his mouth but singularly dedicated to hurting his brother.

They were both sobbing, bleeding black ichor and red blood, and interlocked so tightly that it didn't take Curiosity's genius to recognize they were trying to destroy the other.

Action came swift from all three of them.

The serpent struck first, leaping for the boy with his jaw clamped firmly on his brother, acting on pure desperation to end the struggle. Emotion and Curiosity took the other boy. Together all three of them strove to loosen the grasp they had on each other, starting with the clamped jaw and moving swiftly onto the strangling arms.

When the serpent's boy was free enough to be pulled away a bit, the child struggling every bit of the way to get back at his brother, the serpent resisted the urge to sink his own teeth into what his bestial instincts had deemed struggling prey and instead fought to roll him on his back in the hope that he wouldn't be able to crawl to his brother if he was laid prone.

It turned out to be a mistake; when he realized he couldn't get to his brother he turned his wrath onto the serpent instead. Screaming bloody murder at the sight of the serpent's mottled face, the child reached up to palm his face away. Sharp nails dug deep into his skin as the serpent turned his face to the side, nails that gouged deep into the bruised flesh of his face and were pursued by an exquisite agony that could only be compared to the pain of discorporation. The serpent recoiled with a strangled hiss, loosening his hold momentarily, and the boy took advantage of his lapse in concentration to lunge for the serpent's bruised throat.

The serpent saw it coming at the last second and hissed out a biting command to protect himself.

" ** _Sssssstop_** ," he snarled. With the velvet tones of his hiss, the sway of his body's motion to once again restrain the bloody boy, the glowing gold of his formerly brown right eye and the bloody pulp of his left burning like hellfire, the furious remnant of Creativity under him fell still.

He was caught, eyes locked onto the serpent's face, mouth agape as he panted breathlessly, tears sparkling at the corners of his eyes.

The serpent himself was crying, blood streaking down his face, venom dribbling from the corner of his lips, sweet agony singing a dangerous song in his veins as his body played with the idea of falling apart all over again but not without reminding him that it wouldn't come back.

He held himself together, fought down the pain, and seethed at the child. His throat ached after his command but the collected venom nestled in his esophagus felt like a soothing balm, coaxing him to resist swallowing if only to continue using it.

" ** _Take a deep breath, Creativity_** ," advised the serpent. The boy did, inhaling for a few long seconds and then exhaling slowly. The serpent managed a half-smile with the undamaged half of his face and nodded, gesturing to continue the motion, choosing to breathe along with him. Slow, calm, patient breaths bound the bloody Creativity and the serpent together for those moments and dulled the serpent's awareness of what was happening around them. He retained eye contact, eye dimming in its golden glow until returning to dark brown, and violent shivering receding between them. 

"Snake!" 

The shout awoke the serpent from his trance. He broke free from the gaze held between himself and Creativity, rolling back on his knees to look over at the boy who had called for him. Emotion and Curiosity were still working on restraining the oily Creativity, a child that was kicking and screaming to _get away_ now that he was free from his brother.

"Keep breathing, Creativity," the serpent whispered to the red boy after sparing him a glance and deciding to stroke his hair back from his face, a gesture he hoped was comforting beyond the bloody mess looking down at him. "I'll send the others over here. You're safe."

That wasn't a lie.

The serpent left him then, smoothly bolting for the other boy. He had begun clawing at himself, an act the serpent subconsciously recognized to be an attempt to escape the pain and fear of the situation. He lunged forward, shoving between Curiosity and Emotion, smacking their hands away from him, and holding his own up to show he meant no harm.

"I have the other one calm," he whispered to the offended Curiosity at his right. On his left, his blind side, Emotion was sobbing horrified tears at the sight of his gouged face and the hot blood still oozing from the wounds, so he spared his Heart only the most cursory of acknowledgements. "Please take care of him. I can help this one."

He didn't know if that was true, unfortunately. What he did know was that the boy before them had slowed his frantic scratching down when they had stopped trying to grab him and was now regarding them like he was a cornered animal and they meant to hurt him. The danger signs were clear to the serpent, clearer than his brother's had been during the heat of the moment, and he chose to respect them enough not to warrant the injuries that would come with further frightening him.

Behind his back Emotion and Curiosity briefly conversed in hushed tones that the serpent refused to let himself hear before they took their turn helping the other child. The serpent only breathed easy once they were gone and he tried to give the wounded child a comforting smile. The impression fell just a little short; half of his mouth was turned down in a bloody frown and his left eye couldn't soften in sympathy along with the right. It hurt to even try to use it and the resulting grimace ruined the whole thing altogether.

"You're safe with me," the serpent said after a brief moment where the two of them stared at one another. It had been clear they were both waiting for the other to say something and the serpent felt it appropriate he be the one to breach the boundary first. "I know you're hurt. Will you let me help?"

His instincts screamed at him. _Help, hurt, run, pain!, don't let them hurt us more!_ The serpent internally cringed at the stream of thoughts that so drastically contrasted his initial elation upon seeing the unconscious twins.

Ignoring the sound of them, he offered his hands to the boy, extending them just barely into his space. The child's narrow chest was heaving, his hands now petting down the raised welts on his arms, his eyes wide and green and distrusting. The serpent understood the distrust. Behind him, he could hear the other two Sides quietly talking with the boy he had left for them, and he also vaguely distrusted the murmured conversation. Something told him that he was the topic of interest. He or the boy's brother, anyway. 

"Emotion?" The poor kid whispered the word through his oily, chapped lips. "Emotion, what- _why_?"

The serpent recoiled in on himself briefly, reflexively protecting his vulnerability from the wounded child. He wasn't Emotion. The Mindscape sang a bitter song through his very veins to merely reinforce the fact of the matter; Emotion had been unable to help this poor boy and the serpent had to take his place. 

"Not Emotion," he said. He forced himself to relax again with a long hiss of a sigh. The welts on his face ached as his features eased but he managed to muffle the flinch under a rolling exhale. _Enforce the calm. You are meant to help._ "I am here to help. Will you let me help?"

The child began to tremble again.

With a start the serpent realized he had disregarded his existence to be like theirs at some point in the past few hours of his life. _Thomas was a child, too_. That meant that he, the serpent, must also see himself as a child and not regard the others as such while excusing himself from the group. He needed to include himself in their ranks. He needed to belong. The Mindscape's opinion of the serpent's existence rode on the shoulders of whether or not the young mind of Thomas Sanders needed him. He needed him. They needed him. The crowding pressure of the Mindscape that roiled like angry thunder clouds in his chest eased up a bit, surprising the serpent; he had not realized the danger had gotten so close in his reluctance to refer to himself as one of them.

"I promise I won't hurt you," the serpent whispered. It was a promise for his new companion and the Mindscape itself, solemnly given and wholly honest in a way that sang sweetly through the tenuous grasp the serpent held on his form. The Mindscape pulled its pressure further back and receded into the wellspring of horror that had seen fit to birth the serpent in the first place; it settled into Emotion's construct and filled in the hidden gaps that were kept secret from all parties present. The serpent was only vaguely aware of the direction in which his incorporeal warden had fled but paid little mind to the _where_ and _why_. He needed to help.

Creativity's wide brown eyes were staring into the serpent's own. They seemed so young and scared, glistening with unshed tears and bruised with unknown nightmares. Slowly his hands lowered from his arms and relaxed at his sides into loose fists, the action allowing the serpent to witness the full extent of injury on the boy's body.

He had scratched bloody scratches onto his own pale, freckled skin and they looked raw and painful, bruised around the edges with a dark smattering of splotches. Scanning up the boy's trembling form, the serpent could see other wounds just settling into place; a deep gash across his brow that oozed viscous black fluid, a series of purpling bruises to rival the serpent's own curled around his shoulders and dug into his collarbone in the shape of strangling hands, and his throat was a raw mess of blood and ink that even now continued to ooze a steady trickle of rancid ichor.

The serpent reclined back on his haunches and exhaled a profoundly disturbed breath into the scene. Creativity mirrored the action, exhaling his own slow breath and trying to sit up to follow him.

"No, no, you need to rest a bit more," the serpent urged when he noticed the action. He leaned forward again to press naked hands onto Creativity's chest to gently ease him back. "I think I can help."

It was quiet a moment between them, a few tense seconds where boy and serpent met eyes and communicated silently. The serpent's promised safety, trust, love. The boy's questioned motives, causation, wondered at names.

"Trust me," said the serpent after the very long moment had met its natural conclusion between them. His voice ached with sincerity. The serpent, now that his pain had quelled along with his fear, could again feel the thrum of _belonging_ sing through his veins and curling under the hands clutching the boy in an effort to stop him from rising again. " _Trust in me._ "

The boy's gaze sparked with a dark green light of _understanding_ way deep down behind his steely brown eyes. The look challenged the serpent to break their tenuous connection then and there; his bloody hands clenched into clawed fists to clearly transmit the intention to gift the serpent with a matching set of wounds on the right side of his face should he try to push him into trust.

The serpent didn't flinch. His mismatched gaze was even, unprovoking, cautiously optimistic and genuine in its nuances. 

When the green aspect of Creativity nodded and eased his defensive posturing the serpent smiled an easy, relieved grin. Gratitude flashed his aching face followed quickly by a grimace of pain.

"Thank you," the serpent whispered. "I trust you, too." His hands, one mottled with bruises and the other pale under a smear of blood, smoothed down the plain grey shirt the boy wore. 

The Mindscape rose up between them as the serpent curled over the boy, cradling its unconventional child in a soothing embrace and also offering up its trust. _Trust_. It washed over the serpent, suffused the depth of his being, and he understood what he must do, what he must actually represent.

The serpent's eyes stung as the Mindscape pushed years of _Emotion_ onto his shoulders, showing him all the rights and wrongs of Emotion's choices, playing out crucial scenes that Emotion had caused to happen. He was able to watch in real time as the first Creativity, the one the serpent would never meet, took his sword to himself in order to placate his need to be wanted and accepted. 

He wept over the nonplussed Green underneath him, sobbed over a broken heart he never even had the right to harbour in the first place.

"Snake," whispered Green in a hoarse, uncertain voice. A shaking hand rose, wavering in its certainty, to touch the bottom most edge of the longest cut. "I trust you."

The serpent's breath hitched in his throat, which grew tight in anticipation. His right eye flashed a dastardly shade of gold that would have set his left eye straight to envy. A tight grin lashed across his lips.

"Close your eyes and I will heal you," whispered the serpent. A Secret. A Promise. _Trust_.

Green did, allowing his hand to fall and folding both over his trembling chest. The serpent realized after a numb moment that the boy was shaking in response to the grief the serpent had felt; he was empathetic, perhaps, or he shared the flesh memories of his division, his murder, with the Mindscape. They could talk about it later, process the feelings and confront the cause, but now was for healing.

The serpent slid a sleek hand up Green's throat, brushing over raw, wet wounds with a tenderness he wasn't even wholly aware of. He stroked the slope of his collarbone, crossed shoulder to shoulder, and smoothed down one arm after the other. In the wake of his slow, patient touch a pale golden string followed, trailing after his fingers and crisscrossing over the injuries laid before him. This was his power, thought the serpent.

The power of Belief. Trust. Promises. Secrets. The power of Emotion's shortcomings as a leader and brother. The power of the Mindscape's Hope, Passion, Dreams.

The serpent sat back again when he finished his work, a silent peace creeping over his awareness with patient ease like a snake swallows its prey. He swooned back, barely cognizant of the shouts of Creativity, Emotion, and Curiosity.

The world darkened.

Before the serpent wholly succumbed, he admitted to himself that he would be different when he awoke. He would be something new.

He might even have a Name.

**Author's Note:**

> So, like, a bit of backstory for my series. Kind of ambiguous. I may write a sequel some time in the future once I've completed the main book following this one-shot.
> 
> Please leave comments, kudos, criticism!


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